


It Never Ends the Way We Had It Planned

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Male Homosexuality, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:10:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raylan told Winona he would follow her out of Harlan.  He hadn’t meant to lie about that.  He really hadn’t.</p><p>He told her he’d have one drink with Arlo and be out of there within the hour.  He hadn’t meant to lie about that either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Never Ends the Way We Had It Planned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alwaysamy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwaysamy/gifts).



> Set post episode 2.12 "Reckoning." spoilers up through that episode. Flashbacks to pre-series events.

Raylan told Winona he would follow her out of Harlan.

He hadn’t meant to lie about that. He really hadn’t. Since they had come separately to Helen’s funeral, it only made sense that they should return separately. And Raylan really thought that he would leave right after her.

Then Arlo fixed him with a look, a look Raylan had never seen on that craggy face before, barely hiding some sadness and grief that had not been present when Raylan’s mother died. “Don’t suppose you’d wanna come down to the VFW with me for a drink?” Arlo asked. “There’s not a drop in the house.”

Raylan knew it was because his father had drunk it all. He measured time in a few deep calming breaths, thought about how he planned never to come back to this goddamn hell hole, and acquiesced with one monotone syllable, then added, “One drink. I’ll meet you down there.”

He called Winona on the way and was forced to leave a message, since she never picked up her phone on the road. He told her he’d have one drink with Arlo and be out of there within the hour.

He hadn’t meant to lie about that either. Arlo Givens was a persuasive man, or Raylan was more thirsty than he’d thought.

Regardless, Raylan didn’t leave until Boyd pulled him off that bar stool.

 

“Oh, hi, Winona,” Ava’s voice came, speaking uncertainly into the kitchen phone. “No, no, we haven’t seen him since we left Arlo’s. Yeah, that is weird. I mean, I can call you back if we hear anything, but I really don’t think-- okay. Yes.”

Boyd listens as she takes down a number and says her awkward goodbyes. He walks into the kitchen and looks at her. She meets his eyes with a worried gaze. “Raylan told Winona he’d be right after her. Then he left a message he was having a drink with Arlo, but he’d be on the road soon. She said he’s more than two hours overdue.”

Boyd and Ava had been back at the house for more than four. They’d had a quiet dinner, they’d sat on the porch, taking in the chill night air. It was only the phone ringing that had brought them inside. “Maybe I’ll go down to the VFW,” Boyd says quietly. “See what’s what.”

Ava gives him a pained look. “I hate to get involved, Boyd.”

“Who else is she gonna call, baby?” he asks, sticking his hands in his coat pockets. He’d kept the coat on even as he came in to hear the news. “And I’d hate Raylan to wrap his car around a tree tryin’ to drive back to Lexington after all that time with Arlo. Especially today.”

She purses her lips. “Fine. I just... him and that woman. I hate to be involved,” she repeats.

Boyd knows Raylan hurt her when he went back to his ex. He knows that, and he knows she’d never say it. He loves the prickling pride of his woman. He loves her stubborn spine. He gives her a weak smile and says, “You know he won’t stay in Arlo’s house. I’m surprised he’s even drank with the man for so long.”

“Yeah, I know,” she grimaces. “Bring him here, if you have to. We owe him that, and more, I expect.”

He leans in to kiss her, softly on the cheek. But she turns her lips to his and they linger before he walks out the door.

 

Boyd hates the VFW.

He hates everything about the stars-and-stripes-forever, don’t-tread-on-me, patriotic gleam of the entire place. He hates the wood paneling and the American flags strewn all across the ceiling and walls of the room. He avoids this place like the plague and he’s already half-mad at Raylan for dragging him here, however unknowingly.

Arlo has his head laid down on the bar as Boyd walks in, unseen by the only two people left inside it. Raylan has his head turned toward his father, smirking at him like he just won something. They both look too worse for wear and Boyd girds himself.

He walks slowly up to the bar, giving a significant look to the bartender, and coming around Raylan’s right side, the opposite one from Arlo. “Raylan,” he says by way of greeting. Raylan doesn’t look terribly surprised to see him, though it could be on account of his slowed reaction time. “Arlo,” he says to Raylan’s daddy, who may not even have heard him as he gets no response.

“Hey, Boyd,” Raylan says with a smile, a big one, bigger than Boyd’s seen in a long while. “I finally did it.”

“Whiskey,” Boyd says, tapping the bar, and turns to his friend. “Did what, Raylan?”

“Drank this asshole under the table,” Raylan returns, jerking a thumb in the direction of his father. “‘Member, ‘member I said, Boyd, one day, I’d do it. Well, I did.”

Raylan had said that once. When they were both working in the mine and they’d been drunk off cheap booze at Audrey’s, and there was a dark mark under Raylan’s eye that he never said a word about and Boyd would never do so foolish a thing as to ask. Raylan had said that he’d beat his daddy at his own game.

Boyd puts a few dollars down on the bar and picks up his tumbler, clinking ice against glass. “Was it all you dreamed it would be?”

Raylan glances over at Arlo, who groans almost imperceptibly. “Didn’t really think it would happen this way,” he says with a frown, and pauses to finish his drink.

He taps the bar for another, but Boyd gives the bartender another very significant look and mouths, “water” while Raylan is looking away. When it’s presented to him, Raylan sips it once, glares at Boyd, then downs the rest like a man come in from forty days and nights in the desert.

Raylan looks over at Boyd again, then frowns at him, squinting as though a thought has passed through his alcohol-thickened head. “What are you doing here, Boyd?”

“Winona gave Ava a call, Raylan. Looking for you,” Boyd says in a low voice, bending his head towards his friend. “I figured you’d be here if you were still with Arlo.”

Raylan shakes his head and his whole body sways with it. He picks up another glass of water the bartender has planted in front of him to replace the one he’s downed and says, waving his hand vaguely at Boyd, “I jus’ need to sober up a little. I’ll be fine. I’ll call Winona when I get on the road. There’s no need--”

Boyd reaches for Raylan before he’s conscious of a desire to do so. He puts his hand firmly down on Raylan’s arm, stopping his movement, and the man looks at him like he’s just committed a serious breach of protocol. “You drank your daddy under the table, Raylan,” Boyd reminds him sternly. “You can’t drive tonight. No matter how good you might feel now, you’re gonna steer that big ol’ Lincoln off the road.”

Raylan glares at Boyd, shaking off his hand. “Arlo downed all the alcohol in his house before he came here. It wasn’t a fair contest and I--”

“Bill, how many has Raylan here had tonight?” Boyd asks before Raylan can finish the lie.

“One beer, three bourbon on the rocks, three double shots bourbon,” the man replies, wiping down the bar to the left of them. “Those last were because Arlo said Raylan couldn’t do it.”

“Yeah, well, look who’s on the goddamn table,” Raylan mutters with a dark look shot at his daddy.

Boyd gives a little sigh, suddenly remembering how ornery and pugnacious Raylan can be in his cups. He continues with his lined-up argument, saying, “All right, Deputy Marshal, does that sound like an amount of alcohol under the influence of which someone should operate a vehicle?”

It’s Raylan’s turn now to heave a sigh.

And it’s then that Arlo slips off his stool. Catching his hands on the bar, he clings to it, holding himself mostly upright, but looking like a swinging chimpanzee in the process before his hands lose their grip and he falls to the floor. Raylan glances down at his father with a look of profound disgust, working his jaw in agitated thought.

Boyd finds he can’t produce such disdain for the man. There is a layer of grief to Arlo’s alcohol-dowsed expression that Boyd has never seen before and he finds it almost disturbing in its pathos. It reminds him of his own daddy’s expression the day his mother died.

“I ain’t going back with him,” Raylan states, with an air of finality, and Boyd is glad at least he isn’t still insisting he can drive.

“He’s got a cot here,” Bill calls from behind the tap. “He stays one or two nights out of the week. I’ll make sure he gets over to it.”

Raylan just stands in response, a little unsteadily, and looks down at Arlo. There’s a funny little regretful grimace that comes over his expression and Boyd thinks for a moment that Raylan might kick the man, but he doesn’t indulge. He just walks on by and out the door.

Boyd can’t do anything but follow him.

 

In Boyd’s truck, Raylan arranges his hat to fall over his eyes. As they drive, Boyd can’t discern if the man is sleeping or not, so he pulls out his cell phone regardless. He calls Ava, lets her know he found Raylan and that she can tell Winona he’s fine and will be back the following day.

When he closes the phone, he finds that Raylan has shifted slightly and is peering out at him from under the brim of his ridiculous hat. “You think you owe me, huh?” he asks in a low voice. “That why you’re doing this?”

Boyd doesn’t say anything. He knows this tone.

He remembers once Raylan went dark and angry like this on Johnny, back when they played ball together and Johnny had said something indelicate about Raylan’s family situation. Raylan hadn’t so much as touched Johnny, but the fury had been there in his eyes, in the sharp knife-edge of his words. Johnny didn’t respond well to his anger and in the process of apologizing had said something else to which Raylan decided to take offense. Johnny wound up throwing the first punch, but Raylan had always been a relentless, merciless fighter and he’d come out on top in the end. They were never anything like friends again after that.

Boyd knows there is no talking to Raylan in this state.

“You think, if you let me stay in that house--not your goddamn house, either--you and she let me stay there and that’s gonna make up for what you did?” There’s grief in Raylan’s voice that Boyd is certain he won’t ever confront and Boyd can’t help shaking his head.

“No?” Raylan grinds out, rough and broken. “You don’t think it will? Answer me, Boyd.”

“It never could, Raylan,” is all Boyd can say. He keeps his eyes on the road. They’re almost to Ava’s now.

“Damn right,” Raylan growls and Boyd can hear him shifting restlessly, cracking his knuckles, itching for a fight. Boyd doesn’t want to give him one, but he begins to consider it an inevitability.

When he parks the truck in Ava’s drive, Boyd sits for a moment then turns to Raylan and speaks in a voice just as low and challenging, “If I let you hit me, do you think that would make up for it?”

He feels numb as he says this, he never meant to take on blame for what happened, he told Raylan so already. It wasn’t him that pulled that trigger. He’d said he was sorry for his hand in it, and he is, but he never felt he needed to prove anything, or ask for forgiveness. Not until Raylan finally laid down that accusation.

And now they’re both thinking it. If not for him, Helen would be alive.

As Boyd expected, Raylan is outraged by even the suggestion--would have been just as angry at anything else Boyd chose to say. But instead of stepping across some invisible line into out-and-out fury, an icy calm steels over Raylan’s body and every action, every movement he makes after, is laced with purpose and barely restrained violence.

Raylan pulls at the handle on the truck’s door and Boyd hears the mechanism unlatch loud in his ears. Raylan’s boots on the gravel of Ava’s drive grind and scrape inside his head and his heart begins to pound because retribution is at hand. He’s not afraid, he’s almost glad. He hadn’t realized he wanted it before, how much, deep down, he thought he deserved it.

Raylan’s stride isn’t slow, but it’s purposeful, and Boyd’s eyes follow him as he comes around to the driver’s side of the vehicle, Boyd’s side. Boyd lets Raylan open his door and pull him from the truck.

Raylan’s hands on the collar of Boyd’s shirt are rough and he feels the top button give and pop off under the strain of being jerked forward. Boyd’s legs are slower than Raylan’s arms and he stumbles from the vehicle, leaning toward and grasping at Raylan, who pushes him forcefully up against the side of the truck, putting pressure on Boyd’s shoulders, but not yet pulling back to strike a blow.

Boyd isn’t feeling numb any longer, but he feels a kind of distance, like he’s hovering outside his body. Except, he also feels hot, strange, not like himself at all. He looks into Raylan’s eyes and doesn’t see that icy fire any longer. He thinks he sees something else, something he thought he’d never see again, something that may never have been there in the first place.

Raylan is beautiful when he is angry. There is a stillness to him, a kind of peace with it that Boyd finds terrifying and captivating. This is something Boyd has always thought. He thinks it again as Raylan stares at him hard, expression unreadable. Raylan meets his eyes and his fists ball up in Boyd’s shirt and Boyd remembers one summer night before everything went to shit and Raylan walked away.

Boyd’s mind is filled with the memory of Raylan’s lips on his even as Raylan leans in swiftly and kisses him fully on the mouth.

 

Twenty years ago, when Ava had been in the eleventh grade and was staying with her Gran for the weekend, she heard voices coming from the road late at night, after it had long been dark in their holler. By the tenor and cadence of one of the voices, she knew Raylan Givens was out there, probably walking up the hill and back to his house.

She remembered being surprised, knowing that in those days Raylan wouldn’t come home at all, let alone walk there, if he could help it. But that night, she’d heard him talking and laughing with someone, another similar voice, but softer and a little higher, that held the familiar accent of Harlan.

Ava had climbed atop her bed and peered out the high, narrow window in her room. From there she could see out to the road. Raylan and another boy were walking slowly, laughing about something, with their shirts thrown over their shoulders in the summer heat. She wondered if they had just come from McCready’s swimming hole. She was too far away to see if their hair was wet.

They took every step together as slow as if they were walking toward some uncertain fate and wanted to make the journey last as long as possible. They stood out dark in front of the tiny aluminum-sided houses that lined the road periodically and disappeared for long stretches as they walked in front of the trees and low growth that separated each property. The moon was high and, even though Ava couldn’t see sharp detail, she could see Raylan’s face, his animated expression.

Ava ached, deep in her chest, when she saw Raylan smile the most genuine one she’d ever seen on him. She’d loved him for two years, he was the first boy she’d ever noticed and the last one she ever wanted and she knew, she just knew, someday she was going to have him.

It wasn’t until the other boy turned around and began to walk backwards, still talking and watching Raylan with dark eyes and a toothy grin, that she realized it was Boyd Crowder.

She didn’t know much about Boyd. Everyone knew his daddy, and most people treated the whole family like uncrowned royalty in Harlan, but Ava had never spoken to any of them. Until a few short months ago, she’d been a skinny wallflower, not deserving of anyone’s interest, let alone the sons or friends of the town’s biggest gangster. Now she seemed to be on the rise for attention from boys, but she was more likely to run into Boyd’s brother Bowman, seeing as he was in her grade.

That night, Boyd seemed as happy as Raylan, though Ava had only ever seen him frowning before. The boys joked, touching each other briefly on the arm in some semblance of roughousing until they slowed to nearly a stop and Boyd said something that made Raylan’s head jerk back and his limbs stop moving all together.

Ava watched, breathless, as Boyd stepped forward, his back still in the direction they were headed, and caught Raylan up in his arms, dragging their lips together with a swift force that Raylan obviously hadn’t been expecting. The moon disappeared behind a cloud and the boys melted into each other, pressing themselves together so that they merged into one long shadow to Ava’s eyes.

She blinked rapidly, wishing the light back, and despairing as she saw them separate and walk slowly away. She couldn’t see their faces, and was almost glad. She wasn’t sure what she would see there, whether she wanted to know.

Her knuckles were white, she realized then, as she clung to the window sill and she sort of collapsed onto her bed, twisting and pressing her face into her comforter, feeling as though her limbs needed to be wrung out. She felt heavy and strange, strung up, and when she pressed her legs together she found her underwear were wet, soaking wet.

She wanted to cry and she didn’t know why. It wasn’t because someone had claimed Raylan Givens before she could, she didn’t think that was what had happened. She felt feverish, almost like she had a few Friday nights before when at the back of the bleachers she’d let Tommy Sherman slip his hand under her bra while they were making out. But this was so much more intense. She’d been curious about Tommy, but that night she realized what it was she really wanted.

She wanted, someday, to be able to kiss Raylan Givens the way Boyd had, with the newness and uncertainty of a first kiss, but with all the passion and stumbling grace she had just seen. She wanted Raylan to feel for her what she could tell he felt for Boyd, in the tenderness of his hands and the truth of his smile.

She wanted it for herself.

But what must have been barely days or weeks later, she heard Raylan had skipped town and not long after, Bowman told her that his brother joined the Army. She was left only with nighttime fantasies and silent imaginings accompanied by her own nimble fingers and later, with Bowman’s considerable prowess and then nothing but his fist and his hurtful words.

Now, Ava stands at her window, holding a nearly empty mug of tea. She heard the truck pull up and went to see, not wanting to come straight out onto the porch, not knowing how angry, or how drunk Raylan would be.

She sees them talking, sees Raylan push himself out of the truck and walk deliberately around to pull Boyd bodily from his vehicle. She doesn’t understand why Boyd doesn’t put up a fight, it’s almost as though he is expecting it, wants it even.

And then Raylan kisses him and the mug slips from her hand and rolls across the floor, splashing the wall and the curtain with the dregs of her tea.

It is the last thing she expects and she watches, transfixed, as the two go to town on each other, pulling and grasping and not letting go for so so long. She puts her hand up against the glass, taking an involuntary step forward.

This, this was what she’d wanted. She’d come so close with Raylan, when she kissed him slow and unexpected at her front door the very first time she’d seen him again, so fresh from her marriage, so ready to be saved, to have it all again, but better. She’d wanted badly, still wants to have that flood of desire at her beck and call, to have that abandon she saw in them as they moved together. She and Raylan had found something like it, but it was tainted by bad timing and guilt.

Ava knows she and Boyd have something like it too, but he can be so careful with her, like he thinks if he goes too far, he will scare her off. They love each other intensely, with so much passion but it’s so warm and slow. She wants deep and dark too, she wants what she sees in Raylan’s eyes, in Boyd’s too when Boyd finally shoves them apart.

She wonders if they would give it to her.

 

Boyd stops thinking, he stops remembering when Raylan kisses him and all he can feel, everything in his world, narrows to just the two of them. Raylan’s lips move slow, sensual, against Boyd’s, but strong and forceful. His hands come loose from Boyd’s shirt and one sinks down to Boyd’s hip, catching two fingers decisively through one of his belt loops while the other rakes fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. Raylan kisses as though he has something to prove, as though this is the blow he decided to strike, instead of one with fists.

Boyd is far too slow to realize how much more devastating this choice will be.

He’s not thinking as his hands somehow travel up, grasping greedily at Raylan’s face, dancing swiftly up and down his neck and shoulders, seeking contact with as much of Raylan as possible. He’s overpowered by this desire that he has somehow harbored for this man for so many years. It’s flooding through him like the deluge from a shattered dam, he feels himself being borne up, carried off by it. He wonders how he kept it bottled so well, so thoroughly that he had forgotten even of its existence.

He feels a kind of transformation in Raylan’s kisses as they continue. They are more desperate, more heated and fierce, and Boyd thinks their minds must be on similar tracks. He never dreamed that anything like this would ever happen between them again, and if he had, his imagination could never have captured the essence of this strange, overwhelming want.

He remembers, fleetingly, a time where he had felt something similar, the night he drove back to this house after he tried to walk away from--

Boyd moans into Raylan’s when he thinks of Ava, his beautiful savior, the love of his miserable life. His mind seems to shut down and all he can think is a string of denials, even as his body tries to take him closer and closer, further under Raylan’s spell. He drags his fingers down to Raylan’s shoulders, digs them far into the man’s thick coat and shoves violently.

The broken contact between them is like a splash of ice cold water and he and Raylan stare at each other. Raylan’s breathing is as heavy as Boyd’s and there is confusion and lust and fear in his eyes.

Boyd remembers that Raylan is drunk, but it doesn’t make him any less angry. What right does he have to take such a thing, buried under abandonment and time and betrayal after betrayal, and unearth it here and now and in such a way? Boyd tries to work that anger into his expression, but he fears his face only echoes the frustration and hurt that he is trying to mask.

Raylan stumbles forward, put off balance by Boyd’s push, and it takes everything Boyd has, to not step forward and steady him. Raylan catches himself before he falls and stands a little taller, looking at Boyd with a question on his face.

“No,” Boyd grinds out, knowing this must be the answer, no matter what question Raylan was going to ask. “I will not do this,” he says and turns away.

He knows Raylan can’t do anything but follow him inside.

The house is dark when Boyd walks in and he thinks that Ava must have gone to sleep, though she’d said she would wait for them. He wants to call to her, but something stops him and he feels a flash flood of self-loathing wash over him. He hears Raylan’s footsteps behind him.

“I think my self-control just took a walk, Boyd,” Raylan murmurs into his ear as the door closes.

“Well, mine didn’t.” Boyd says this even as Raylan comes around to face him, and he finds he can’t back away. Raylan’s breath smells of bourbon and heat and Boyd sways with the heady mixture. Their mouths are barely inches apart, Raylan’s hand rests at his hip again and Boyd’s cock is growing hard in his jeans. He can’t think, he shouldn’t--

“You sure about that?” Ava’s voice came from the stair and Boyd’s heart seizes in his chest, dropping like a stone to his stomach. He can feel Raylan stiffen in the same moment and they turn together to look at her.

Ava is standing on the stairs, three steps up, and she takes each one slowly, deliberately, until she reaches the floor. She is barefoot and clad in her bathrobe, the silk one he bought her right after they started this thing together, after he’d come back and stayed for good.

She looks between them, something dark and moody in her eyes, but Boyd doesn’t sense any anger from her. Ava’s fury usually runs fiery and frustrated, and her gaze now, her expression is calm and hot like a low-burning stove.

“Ava,” Boyd begins, but finally she reaches him and lifts a finger to his lips.

“Shhh,” she croons, and kisses him. Her finger slips down from his lip and back up to trace the ridge of his ear. He sucks in a surprised breath and her tongue slides into his mouth, warm and inviting. His hands come around her of their own volition, but she pulls away and looks into his eyes. The blue of them seemed deeper than usual and there is a knowledge there too, a challenge.

She lets her robe fall open and Boyd’s eyes widen as he sees she’s got nothing on underneath it. The porch light is still on and it’s the only thing illuminating the room, playing with shadows across the smooth, white skin of Ava’s legs and stomach and the darkness of her nipples and pussy.

Boyd loves this woman and he watches her turn to Raylan and splay her hand across his chest, where his heart must be hammering. She stretches up on tip-toe to kiss him with the exact same fervor Boyd had just done. She breaks free a moment later and Raylan sways back, his eyes still closed, but she holds onto him, turning to look over her shoulder at Boyd. “Will you share this with me?” she asks.

 

Ava sees Boyd processing what she has just asked of him, she knows he is a smart man, and she prays he will understand her.

He blinks at her dumbly and she can commiserate. The heat of the room, the tension between all three of them, would short-circuit anyone’s brain. She keeps her grip tight on Raylan. He seems to realize now that they are still very close to each other, because he leans in, nuzzling her neck and whispering her name. She can feel his smile against her skin and she remembers that feeling and loves it all over again.

He puts a hand on her hip and slides it up where his thumb catches on her tit, rubbing a little half-circle around her nipple. She breaks eyes contact with Boyd and lets out an involuntary cry of pleasure. Her pussy is throbbing and wet and she wants to shove Raylan’s free fingers between her legs, but Boyd hasn’t said yes yet.

“Ava,” Raylan whispers again and by the angle of his chin on her shoulder, she knows he is looking at Boyd. She moans at the thought of Boyd watching them and claws her fingers through Raylan’s hair. She hears Boyd hiss in response. It’s short and quick, like he didn’t want to make the sound in the first place.

“You can have this, Boyd,” Raylan says, and Ava wants to see their faces. Instead, she clamps her teeth around Raylan’s earlobe as he says, “She’s offering it to you. God help me, I am too. Do you want it?”

Ava twists her body around again to see him. His eyes are huge in his face and he’s holding himself very still. She can see his decision is already made, he just hasn’t acted yet. “Don’t hold anything back,” she whispers and he advances on her.

Boyd’s left hands winds through her hair, forcing her head back roughly, and she is facing the ceiling as his mouth descends on hers. His kiss is bruising and demanding and it’s everything she’s wanted from him. She wraps her arm around his neck and keeps her other hand fisted in Raylan’s jacket.

She moans into Boyd’s mouth when Raylan’s fingers slide up her thigh, card through the thick hair at her pussy and slide two in, slow and steady, with just a little pressure. Boyd puts a hand on her tit and only deepens the kiss, rubbing his thumb around and across her nipple, where Raylan’s had just been. His other arm has wrapped around her waist and she’s grateful for the support as her toes threaten to curl into the floorboards when Raylan’s thumb moves in a similar motion to Boyd’s on her clit.

She thinks she might come then and there, but she breaks the kiss, whispering, “Wait, wait,” to Boyd’s lips.

He stops, presses his forehead to hers, breathes her in, waits, just like she asked. Raylan’s hand in her has stilled, she knows he’s waiting too.

“Kiss him again,” she says, looking into Boyd’s eyes. “Like before.”

And Boyd smiles, true and beautiful at her. “I love you, Ava,” he murmurs in wonder, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and in those words she hears his thanks as well.

When Boyd’s lips meet Raylan’s again, Raylan’s fingers slip from Ava automatically, reaching up to clutch at Boyd’s face, to draw him closer. They kiss like they are starved for each other, swift and greedy, they breathe together, huffing and desperate and Ava’s own breath catches in her throat.

“Upstairs,” she whispers, and pulls at one of the loops over Boyd’s belt, drawing him toward the steps. “Come on, boys,” she urges, and they follow her, Raylan pushing as Ava pulls, they make it to her bedroom in a flurry of kisses and clothing.

She sheds her robe on the floor just inside her doorway and watches them divest each other of their jackets and shirts, lips on skin, they began to work on belt buckles and flys, thrusting down and kicking off their pants. “Tell me,” she says, stopping them, bracing her hands on the door frame, feeling the draft across her exposed skin, feeling their eyes on her as they stand together, naked as she.

It’s Raylan who speaks first. “What do you want to know, Ava?” Boyd’s eyes are clear, honest, but his mouth is shut.

“On the holler road, in the middle of the night, was that the first time he kissed you?”

Raylan answers a breathless, “Yes,” in the same moment that Boyd asks, “How did you know that?”

“You stopped outside my Gran’s house. I saw it,” she says. “Did you fuck? After that?”

Raylan’s lips thin, it’s not quite a frown, but she feels like it must be something unpleasant. He glances at Boyd and they don’t touch, but she can see the way they’re standing, that it’s only a matter of time. Boyd nods to Raylan and looks at Ava with love in his face and barely concealed secrets behind his eyes, his mouth still shut.

It’s Raylan who tells her.

 

When Raylan was nineteen, working a deep mine, and hating every minute of it, sometimes Boyd was the only thing that made the days bearable. When Boyd was there, beside him, when his smile lit up the shaft, or Audrey’s, or the darkness of the road, Raylan would forget that he ever thought about leaving.

But Boyd wasn’t always there. Sometimes they had different shifts, sometimes the foreman put them on different crews, and they worked in different shafts, on different jobs, and on those days, Raylan would hate everything just a little bit more.

And then, he would see Boyd waiting for him outside of the locker room, or he would be the one waiting for the cart to bring Boyd up from the black, and they would share a smile and walk away from it together, leave it behind.

They spent most of that summer together when they were off the job. Boyd, always intense and serious in other company, would joke and smile when he was around Raylan, who felt he could drop his moody frowns and sarcastic glares when he heard Boyd’s quiet laugh.

They talked endlessly about all manner of things and they loved each other, in their way, though they never called it that. He didn’t even know that’s what it was, not even after Boyd kissed him, not for a long time.

McCready’s swimming hole wasn’t a secret place, everyone went there once in a while, but few went at 2:00 AM on a weeknight. Boyd and Raylan had gotten off a late shift and neither wanted to go home. The summer was near ending and Raylan felt himself growing restless, dreading a winter spent in the oppressive heat under the mountain and the chilling cold of everywhere else. Raylan wanted summer to stay on far past its due time, so he told Boyd they should go swimming.

The water was brisk, with the nights growing just a little colder, and it was refreshing. They swam naked together and thought nothing of it, always had done it that way. They pushed each other under the water, splashed at each other like children, ducked down and grabbed at ankles.

When they came up for air after Boyd’s insistent grasp had pulled Raylan under once again, Raylan retaliated, throwing himself across the water between them, coming down on Boyd to push him back below the surface. But as their limbs tangled together, Raylan felt something he hadn’t expected and he pulled away. Eyes wide, treading water in a sea of uncertainty, and Boyd looked right back at him.

They glanced away at the same time and Raylan made some joke, about something, anything else, and they both smiled like neither knew anything had happened. But Boyd’s eyes were dark after that, and his grin didn’t come quite as quick. Raylan wouldn’t have ever said he noticed anything was wrong, not for the life of him, not until after Boyd kissed him.

This is a thing that Raylan has noticed about himself after many years of being who he is. He’s willfully ignorant until the blinding, shattering truth is painfully obvious. He’s not sure how he hasn’t learned his lesson yet, but it seems he never knows what’s inside himself, until he’s hitting someone else over the head with it.

Like tonight, he didn’t have a handle on what he was going to do to Boyd as he got out of the truck, until well after his tongue was down his throat. He didn’t think about how it could have been punishment as much as desire, until he saw Boyd’s guilt-ridden face when he pushed Raylan away. Raylan hadn’t meant to do any of that, hadn’t thought it through at all.

He was mystified by how quickly he’d gone from furious at Boyd to full-blown, tongue-in-your-mouth, nails-down-your-back desire. And it wasn’t until Raylan was feeling these warring emotions churn up inside him, swirl out of his control, that he realized how powerful they were, how hard he must have fought to forget, and how effectively he eventually stomped it all away.

He’d seen the same confusion and pain in Boyd’s face outside, before Ava had welcomed them in, and it echoed a greater pain and disappointment from all those years ago.

That night, as they walked back to his house, Raylan knew that Boyd had gone hard in the swimming hole, but he dismissed it, and he’d thought everything was fine. Until Boyd said, “You gonna ask me if my prick is still hard, Raylan?” and then didn’t even give Raylan a chance to answer before pressing their lips together.

The kiss was a heady thing, strong enough to get drunk off, and Raylan felt that immediately. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t lean in either, letting Boyd take and give what he wanted.

When they drew apart, Boyd didn’t speak. He just let Raylan go and turned, started walking again toward the house. Raylan followed him, asking quietly, “What do you want to do now?” Fearing and hoping they were thinking the same thing.

“I don’t know,” Boyd said, just as quiet, like he hadn’t been expecting the kiss to be what it was, like he’d thrown down a challenge and got himself back a mystery.

They sort of revolved around each other, not speaking, walking in a roundabout way toward Raylan’s house. They didn’t touch very much, but Raylan remembered now, that they were drawn to each other, in the same way that now he felt his limbs straining to be near Boyd.

Then, their shoulders brushed imperceptibly and their footsteps crossed over each other as they tried to pretend nothing had changed. After a little while, they began to smile, thinking on what could be ahead, settling into the realization of what was before them, between them.

Neither expected Arlo to be sitting on the porch of Raylan’s house with a shotgun across his knees.

“What you doin’ out here in the middle of the night, boys?” Arlo slurred, obviously drunk, as he was so often at the time, though Raylan had been surprised he wasn’t down at the VFW.

Raylan remembered tilting his head, putting his hands in his pockets, and answering, “Could ask you the same question, Arlo.”

The man blinked and didn’t answer. “Why are you so wet?”

Boyd put his hands up, smiled real nice, and said, “We were swimmin’, Mr. Givens. That’s all.”

“At this hour? Just the two of you?” And Arlo stood up real fast, apparently drawing his own drunken conclusions, he raised the shotgun and pointed it straight at Boyd. “You best take yourself off my goddamn property, you fuckin’ faggot. Don’t wanna see you here again, neither.”

“Now, Arlo--” Raylan remembers saying, scared-shitless, but after that, everything gets a little foggy.

He’d thought he was too old to have something beaten out of him, but he never spoke to Boyd about that night again, not until now. And when they saw each other afterwards, they barely looked at each other, too afraid and too unsure-- Raylan of what happened, and Boyd of what it meant-- to do anything like what they should have done.

Long after, it did sort of come back to him, the memories, not the feeling itself, and he dismissed them. Tossing them aside as youthful fancy and misunderstanding. When he saw Boyd again, twenty years later, everything but that was between them, the guns, the money, the murder, and he thought he hated Boyd, for what he’d become.

He knew different now, and he tells Ava so when she asks. He only tells her any of it, only lets Boyd hear, because he’s so drunk, his mouth says the words even as they become thought out of a mire of emotion.

As he speaks, Ava walks further into the room, taking slow steps and looking between them as if she’s trying to unravel a complex knot. Raylan doesn’t look at Boyd as he tells the story, and he doesn’t think he can see the man’s reactions echoed in Ava’s soft expression.

When he gets to Arlo’s part in the story, and how after he’d been confused and had forgotten, he feels an absence at his side. But it’s not until he finishes, reveals that, years ago, in Miami, he remembered and still did nothing, that Raylan sees that Boyd has sat down hard on the bed at their backs.

Raylan blinks and knows the bourbon is nowhere near out of his system as he says finally, “Arlo never spoke to me about it, not that I can remember. I don’t think the memories of that night stuck with him ‘til the next morning. You’re the only one who knows, Ava. I never told Winona, never really thought to.”

At the mention of his ex, Raylan feels himself waver, and realizes it’s his legs that are unsteady, not just his mind. Boyd’s hand wraps lightly around his wrist and Raylan looks down at him as he tugs him to the bed as well. He sinks down hard and lets his head fall back flat, staring up at the ceiling.

Boyd doesn’t let go, and still, he says nothing.

Raylan closes his eyes and hears Ava say, “It’s your turn, Boyd. Tell me what he didn’t.”

 

Boyd has always thought that honesty is best among his friends and his women, but he has for many many years kept his mouth firmly shut about the things of which they are currently speaking.

Boyd looks at Ava, stubbornness and pity in her face, and knows he has to speak. What he doesn’t know is how they will come away from this. Certainly not unchanged, but he can only hope--unscathed.

“Truth be told, Ava,” he begins slowly, watching her make her way towards them. “For a long time I wished that night had never happened. I kissed Raylan on a dare to myself, to see how he would react. It never occurred to me that it would change me, all in an instant. I’ve spent the rest of my life denying that change.”

She stops, gloriously golden in the dim light of her room, at Raylan’s feet, and she watches Boyd as she climbs on the bed and straddles another man.

Boyd looks down to see that Raylan’s opened his eyes and he says his next piece to the man himself, even as Raylan’s face spreads into a slow smile and his hand travels down to trace circles across Ava’s knee. “When I saw the fear and uncertainty in your eyes that next day, Raylan, and I saw the bruises on your face, and when you didn’t smile at me like you’d always done, I thought you’d changed your mind.” Raylan’s eyes widen, but Boyd forces himself to continue, “And I was so ashamed for not having done the same, that I never spoke a word. After you left, I made myself deny that such a thing ever happened, I tried to make myself believe I had imagined it all.”

“That’s not so different from what I did, Boyd,” Raylan says with patient understanding, and Boyd can’t stop his thumb from rubbing gently across the flesh of Raylan’s wrist, where he still hadn’t let go. Ava settles herself further on Raylan and he groans softly. Boyd is transfixed as Ava dips forward, trails her lips across Raylan’s chest. Her eyes, however, are stuck on Boyd’s and he knows she’s not done listening.

“It’s very different,” Boyd replies finally, and he remembers the terrible lurch of shameful fear that shot up inside him when Arlo called him that word. He remembers not wanting to leave, knowing he should not leave Raylan with that man, but he ran anyway. He ran because Raylan turned to him and smiled, whispered fast, “It’s nothin’. Get out before you’re here long enough he’ll remember he saw you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Boyd doesn’t think Raylan remembers saying that, he was talking so much, revealing so much about that night that Boyd doesn’t think he would have held it back. But Boyd had heard it and he knows now he should never have listened. Raylan slipped away from him that night, before he’d gotten himself a solid grip.

“What happened to you was a tragedy, what I did to myself was a crime,” Boyd says heavily.

Raylan is about to speak, but Ava slides herself down his hips, and Boyd knows her wet pussy has just skimmed across Raylan’s undoubtedly sensitive cock, causing the man’s breath to hitch and the words to lodge in his throat. She whispers something to him that Boyd can’t hear and Raylan glances at him and smiles again, waiting.

Ava looks up at Boyd through dark lashes and speaks low, “It’s no different than what I’ve done, Boyd. I said I saw you on the road. I saw what you had that night and I coveted it. I always wanted Raylan, but after that I wanted to be with you both, wanted to be a part of this madness. And after Raylan left, I tried to turn to you, because I saw what was in you, even from that distance.”

Boyd remembers suddenly the one and only time he spoke to Ava before she’d begun dating Bowman. He was two days away from Basic and everyone was talking about it. He’d seen Ava climb out of his brother’s truck at the bonfire in their daddy’s back woods. He’d gone over to say hello, not knowing who the pretty girl was. When Bowman introduced them, he’d told Ava that Boyd was going to the Army soon and wasn’t that great?

He always wondered why her face fell so far from the charming smile she’d given him at first. He looks into her eyes now and knows.

“After you were gone too, I took me the next best thing, in my mind,” she says, hushed and regretful. “And I put myself in the hands of a monster. I should have waited for you. If what you done, Boyd, if that was a crime, mine’s much greater. And no one was harmed but ourselves.”

He doesn’t say Bowman died, but he thinks it, then shudders, torn between guilt for what was done and the knowledge that Bowman had it coming and so did he, for so so long.

“Okay,” Ava says as she lifts herself up, hands coming around to slide Raylan’s cock inside her slick pussy, and Boyd doesn’t quite understand until he feels Raylan’s hand move, even as he moans her name, drawing away from Boyd’s grip, and wrapping his fingers around Boyd’s cock. “Shhh,” Ava soothes when Boyd sucks in a breath, all his focus going to the hot, strong, greedy fingers pumping slow, up and down his erection.

“Come here,” Raylan says, eyes dark with purpose, and draws him close with a long pull. Boyd scrambles to comply. He presses his head down onto the blanket next to Raylan, who turns minutely and whispers in his ear, “Wouldn’t be here, if not for the things we done, Boyd. You want to take them back? You want to give this up?”

“No,” Boyd answers, “never.” He bucks his hips into Raylan’s hand, breathes in the strong scent of bourbon and sweat, and moves his hand to draw the man into a long kiss full of sighs and moans. Boyd hears the sound of Ava riding Raylan’s cock, rolling her hips in rough sync with the motion of Raylan’s hand.

Boyd knows Raylan is drunk and he feels it in the uneven pressure of the man’s fingers, the loosening and tightening of his grip, and Boyd loves it. Raylan’s thumb drags in an off-kilter swirl across the head of his cock, up, down and around, and Ava lets out a stuttering sigh.

Boyd feels the tension build, up, down and around, as Raylan’s muscles strain and he gasps a silent breath to Boyd’s lips right before he comes inside Boyd’s woman. And the shaking stillness of his orgasm travels up into his hand, pumping one last time and Boyd’s hips buck once more and his eyes roll. He comes, swearing into Raylan’s ear, come flowing in ribbons across the bedspread and Raylan’s arm.

In the next moment, battling that blissful serenity, Boyd realizes Ava hasn’t come with them and he stirs, and smiles, knowing just what to do.

 

Ava is at the edge, knowing her boys have gone over, yet still, she hears Boyd’s voice whisper something to Raylan, something long, something lovely, she imagines, but she can’t make it out and she’s hovering, just about to pull back and away. Then she hears Raylan laugh, a soft huff, and she’s somehow spun around, on her back on her bed and Raylan scrambles around, fits himself behind her while Boyd presses forward, spreading her legs and sinking his face into her goddamn pussy.

Ava gasps, air filling her lungs fast and loud, but Raylan is there and he brushes her hair across her shoulder, presses his lips against the exposed skin of her neck, and Boyd moves with her when her hips buck up and into him. Raylan’s hands travel across her skin as though no time has passed since he’s had her to himself while Boyd laps at her pussy, rolls his tongue across her clit like it lives there, like it owns the place.

Raylan’s hands are both on her tits now, fingers slipping across the sensitive flesh, drawing circles around her nipples, all while his tongue and lips and teeth leave his mark on her neck and collarbone. She tilts her head back, no longer able to hold it up as Boyd’s tongue works overtime and she doesn’t know what sound she makes but it feels beautiful.

Raylan smiles against her skin as her muscles grow taught, strung up with sighs. She wraps her arms up and around his neck and Boyd takes one last buck and jerk, pressing his tongue all the way in, stilling her with his hands, helping her ride it out and she can’t tell whose name she’s calling, long and low, and barely audible, but she knows they can both hear, that they both feel it with her.

She trembles with it, feeling it spin her around, ‘til she’s not sure which way is up, and she doesn’t care, eyes closed, vision shot with stars, until the torrent escapes her, flowing fast away, leaving her quiet and blissfully sated. Raylan kisses her hair.

When Boyd takes his lips from her, pulling himself up to look at them both, he smiles, awe written in his expression as he says, “I tasted him on you, Ava, I sucked him out of you.” She shivers and stretches up, twines her fingers through Raylan’s hair.

She hears Raylan smile back. “What do I taste like, Boyd?”

Ava thinks, bitter and rich, and utterly lovely, but she only has the strength to grin at them.

And Boyd replies, “Like truth, Raylan. Like honor.”

Raylan tells him he’s full of shit and Ava laughs and loves them both.

 

Ava makes them strip the bed before they sleep in it. She disappears into the hallway, bound for the linen closet and Raylan and Boyd stand there and stare at each other, the mattress like a gulf between their bodies.

Boyd tries to smile, but he sees Raylan’s expression has gone serious. He tilts his head forward, a silent invitation for Raylan to speak his mind.

“There’s no debt between us, Boyd,” Raylan says. “Not now. And,” he hesitates for a moment, licks his lips and then continues. “You weren’t the one fired that shot and I was the one put a bullet in your chest, left you that scar, set you on this path, it seems.” He stares hard at the small scar on the side side of Boyd’s chest, all that remains of a bullet hole.

Boyd tries to interject, but Raylan shakes his head, lifts his eyes back up to Boyd’s.

“We could do this all night and day and it wouldn’t make a goddamn bit of difference. There’s no debt, never was. Ain’t nothing you need to make up for, all right? No matter what I say tomorrow.”

Boyd doesn’t say he hadn’t felt the burden of any kind of debt until Raylan placed it on him, and wonders now how he can feel such relief at those words of absolution. “All right, Raylan,” he replies and then feels a slowly sinking sensation, as it registers that Raylan believes tomorrow should be any different than tonight.

He wants to say so, to tell Raylan they can go forward, that they don’t need to take any steps back this time, but now Raylan smiles, like they hadn’t ever had such a solemn conversation, and he leans one knee on the bed. He reaches across to Boyd, and Boyd meets him with a soft kiss to the side of his mouth.

Raylan huffs and grins, sliding his tongue between Boyd’s lips, pulling them close by Boyd’s shoulders and throwing them off balance. They fall together on the mattress, a tangle of limbs and a deepening kiss.

“I’m sorry,” Raylan whispers to him and Boyd can’t tell if it’s for what happened long ago, for the elbow currently in Boyd’s ribs, or for what will happen tomorrow.

“Raylan--” Boyd tries, but Ava returns, a pile of mismatched blankets in her arms. She sees them together and smiles, like she’s so happy she can’t believe she’s not dreaming, and Boyd shuts his mouth.

“I’m too tired to make the damn bed,” Ava tells them. “So we’re gonna sleep in a big ol’ nest of blankets, like the proper debauched ruffians we are.” She dumps the load of fabric on top of them both and slips inside between them.

She looks pleased with herself as Raylan dips his head to press his lips to her shoulder, drawing the blankets away and around her. She looks up into Boyd’s eyes, shifts her legs so their knees are knocking together, and rests her forehead against his chest. Boyd’s hands drift to rest at her hip and Raylan’s fingers brush across his, settle there, and it feels right, too right.

Ava falls asleep quickly. Boyd hears the evening of her breath, the heaviness of her head against him, the loosening of her joints and muscles. He looks at Raylan, who’s blinking slowly, smiling still, and knows that what’s left of that bourbon is doing its work as he fights against sleep as well.

“Relax, Raylan,” Boyd says, “No one’s gonna turn into a pumpkin.”

Raylan laughs a little and looks at Boyd like he knows he’s a liar still. They say nothing else. Boyd feels as though it’s a long time before he finally sleeps.

He wakes to the sound of a cell phone ringing.

Ava groans, curling further toward Boyd, and he shifts his weight, wrapping his arms tighter around her. He hears Raylan casting about on the floor for his phone and the low, “Hello,” when he answers.

There’s chatter on the other end of the line, but Boyd’s not close enough to hear words.

“I’m sorry,” Raylan says, sitting up and leaning over his knees as he runs his hand through his hair, sleep in his voice. More chatter follows. “No, I slept on Ava’s couch.” The first of many lies, Boyd supposes. There’s a pause, and Raylan answers, “No, I just woke up. I told you, I’m sorry, all right. I didn’t _want_ to stay, Winona, I just ended up staying. You know it’s not the same. I’ll call you from the road.” There’s one final pause and Boyd hears Raylan sigh, “Yes, I promise.”

Ava’s still sleeping and Boyd doesn’t want to wake her as he hears Raylan sigh again, bone-deep this time, and feels his weight lift from the bed.

Boyd watches him come around the bed, picking up his scattered clothes, putting them on with slow, mechanically-efficient movements. Raylan’s face is carefully blank, his jaw jutting, and he doesn’t meet Boyd’s eyes.

Ava stirs now, smiling and blinking up at Raylan, who looks wrecked at her expression. Then she frowns at him, stretches and twines her body around Boyd. “You’re leaving?” she mumbles and Boyd pulls her closer, arms coming tight around her shoulders.

“I have to,” Raylan whispers desperately. “I have--”

Raylan breaks off and turns away, slinging a hand frustratedly through his hair. He finishes buckling his belt and shrugs into his jacket as Boyd and Ava look on from the bed. Back in his rumpled funeral attire, Raylan looks like death, pale and angry, devastation in his wake.

He doesn’t look back when he walks out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and (hopefully) general feel of this fic was taken from Iron and Wine's "Muddhy Hymnal" off of The Creek Drank the Cradle. The song can be found [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR3jQQH9sYg).
> 
> Special thanks to my two beautiful and talented betas who will be revealed when I am! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Boot Marks Where You'd Been (The It Never Ends the Way We Had It Planned Remix), Part 1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/672667) by [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah)
  * [Boot Marks Where You'd Been, Part 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/683885) by [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah)




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